Vince Cable pledges investigation into private equity firms supplying public services
June 6, 2011 No Comment
Business secretary describes financial turmoil at major care home provider Southern Cross as ‘shocking state of affairs’ The business secretary, Vince Cable, has asked officials to investigate the role of private equity firms supplying public services after describing the financial turmoil at Southern Cross, the country’s largest provider of care homes, as a “shocking state of affairs”. Cable also promised the GMB union that he would consider a motion, debated on the floor of its annual conference in Brighton, that the crisis at Southern Cross “should serve as a warning of what happens when we forget our basic approach to economic policy and the role of the state”. The GMB puts the blame for the plight of Southern Cross – the country’s biggest care homes company, which is responsible for looking after 31,000 elderly residents across just over 750 homes – on “scandalous financial engineering”. The union published a 61-page dossier on the troubles at the care group provider, which has announced that it will underpay its rent for the next four months as it struggles with a £230m annual rental bill. The dossier said major UK and US financial institutions were involved in buying into the sale and leaseback model for Southern Cross, which had now “blown up”. The union claimed rents for the care homes were £100m higher than they should be, and that this was at the heart of the current problems. The US private equity firm Blackstone is estimated to have made £600m in a four-year period on secret financial dealings on the care homes, which are now run by Southern Cross. The report said the “debacle” involved Jeremy Haywood, the permanent secretary to David Cameron, who was co-head of UK investment banking at Morgan Stanley. The company acted as financial advisors and lead managers during the sale. The dossier complained of a “lack of transparency” over who owns the care homes and the financial returns to the “ultimate owners” of the properties. Blackstone, meanwhile, had previously issued a statement denying that it had anything to do with Southern Cross’s problems. Cable – who was overseas on a trade delegation when the crisis began last week – indicated that he was looking at the general issue of private equity stakes in public service delivery. “I’ve asked my department to see whether there is an underlying problem with private equity companies supplying public services,” he told the GMB. “The provisional view is that this is very much a matter for the sector regulators – the care quality commission and Monitor – but I will continue [to see] whether we can pursue that further.” In comments that will raise eyebrows of Conservative cabinet colleagues, Cable also cited Liberal Democrat concerns about the “general lessons” of private sector involvement in delivering public services. He said they were “one of the reasons why the Liberal Democrats have taken a distinctive and tough line in privatisation in relation to the NHS”. Last week, the government gave reassurances that it would take steps to ensure there was “effective protection” for anyone affected by the Southern Cross problems. The emergency debate at the GMB conference ended with a call on the government to appoint a cabinet minister to help secure the future of staff and residents at Southern Cross. The union said it was time for a “fresh start” and a different social care model for looking after the elderly and vulnerable. In comments made after delivering a speech that prompted heckling over its warnings of possibility of beefed up anti-strike laws, Cable found common ground with the union as he agreed that “very compelling points” had been made by delegates during the debate. Cable told the audience there were “several issues” around private equity companies in the supply of public services, and said these should be looked at. “The basic reason why private equity flourished was because of favourable tax treatment given to loan finance,” he said. “The chancellor and I are both concerned about this distortion in the system and of course there was a lot of, frankly, tax dodging. “When we got into the coalition government, one of the things we insisted from day one was substantially increasing capital gains tax as a way of stopping the tax dodging that was going on in the private equity sector. “There are bigger issues here. I heard your debate, I heard your resolution and I undertake to take it back and look at very seriously at the proposals you made.” Helen Ewan, who works at a Southern Cross home in Mansfield, told the conference employees were having to work longer hours, being “blackmailed” by managers to cover for staff shortages. The GMB official Justin Bowden said the fate of 31,000 residents was “hanging in the balance” because profit had been put before people. “Time is long overdue for a new standard of care that guarantees the weak and vulnerable the dignity and respect they deserve,” he said. Vince Cable Trade unions Private equity Public services policy Older people Hélène Mulholland guardian.co.uk
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Former head of IMF will face trial and remains under house arrest in New York accused of raping hotel maid Dominique Strauss Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, has pleaded not guilty to charges he raped a hotel maid. The one-time French presidential hopeful will face trial over the allegations that cost him his job and sent the IMF into crisis. He will be back in court on 18 July. At a brief hearing at Manhattan criminal court he pleaded not guilty in a strong voice, standing between his defence team and watched by his wife, the millionaire former journalist Anne Sinclair. Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers said they needed six weeks to assess evidence that has been collected by the US authorities. DNA matching Strauss-Kahn’s has reportedly been found in semen on the maid’s clothing and on a section of carpet from his hotel room. Experts say the defence will probably argue that any sexual contact between the maid and Strauss-Kahn was consensual. Strauss-Kahn was released on $6m bail three weeks ago. He has been staying in a $50,000 a month townhouse in Tribeca, Manhattan. The former IMF boss is wearing a electronic tag that monitors his movements and must pay $200,000 a month for a private security team that is authorised to use force should he attempt to flee. He is under curfew between 10pm and 6am and allowed out only for court, doctors’ visits and religious services. Prosecutors must be notified at least six hours before he goes anywhere. Under his terms of house arrest he can receive up to four visitors at a time besides family. Last month a moving company picked up 44 boxes of furniture, clothes, art and a rug from Strauss Kahn’s $4m Washington DC home and delivered them to the Tribeca townhouse. At the time of his 14 May arrest the 62-year-old economist had been considered a leading contender to run against the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Dominique Strauss-Kahn United States France Dominic Rushe guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Royal newlyweds Will and Kate are poised to move into Kensington Palace, taking a small apartment in the grand palace as their starter home, reports the Telegraph . The palace, home to several royals, is well known to Prince William, who grew up there with his brother after his mother’s divorce…
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‘Twilight’ stars sink teeth into MTV Movie Awards; ‘X-Men:First Class’ tops box office; Kate Middleton’s wedding gown to go on display in Buckingham Palace. (June 6)
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Click here to view this media Howie Kurtz did a segment on the media’s coverage of Anthony Weiner’s Twitter story on CNN’s Reliable Sources. Jeff Jarvis was the voice of reason in a lot of ways. I like Gawker and expect them to have a good time with this story–because there’s nothing Gawker likes better than a political sex scandal–and they have Maureen O’Connor defending the merits of their coverage. Kurtz set up her opening by saying that Gawker can get away with using salty language on their site and she responded by saying the word “dick” on TV and although it made it on the telecast, it was deleted out on CNN’s transcript page . Transcripts must never be seen by children. They may go blind. MAUREEN O’CONNOR, WRITER, GAWKER: Well, I personally only cover Capitol Hill for the underwear scandals. This is what we do. And, you know, is this relevant to Anthony Weiner’s career as a politician? Maybe. But it’s an interesting story. And from our perspective, this is what we do. We cover human interest stories. We cover the strange case of a person, a powerful person, ending up falling to the exact same ridiculously follies that everyone does, taking a picture of his (EXPLETIVE DELETED) and getting caught doing it. ‘Doing it’ is still not a given yet and the Congressman hasn’t admitted to that, but Howie was stunned for a second and then turned to Jarvis and asked him how journalists handled the story. KURTZ: OK. As I was saying, Gawker does have a different way of talking about these things. Not a word that I would use on the air. Jeff Jarvis, I know you’re not embarrassed to talk about these things. We’ve talked about your prostate operation on this program. How did journalists do on this story, particularly on figuring out what happens with a Twitter account, whether it can be hacked and whether a photo can be sent without your knowledge? JEFF JARVIS, FOUNDER, “BUZZ MACHINE”: Well, Howie, I disagree with you when you say the media had no choice. Yes, there’s a choice. It’s a fine story for Gawker, absolutely. It’s a fine story for Jon Stewart, who point out the bloggers actually did some reporting on this. But all in all, what’s the real story here? You know, that a congressman has a penis? Let’s stipulate that, there’s no news in that. That he wears underwear? Who cares. That he might have accidentally sent out the wrong photo on Twitter? OK, big deal. We have to find some medium ground here behind the American Puritanism of, oh, my God, congresspeople are sexual, and the European view that, of course they’re sexual. There’s some middle ground. This is not a story, Howie. The amount of effort that was put into this was just pathetic. KURTZ: Jeff, I take your point that perhaps we have overplayed it. But the reason I said we have no choice is because Congressman Weiner kept giving interviews in which he clearly could not answer basic questions, including the clips I just played about, well, I have no idea whether that guy and that picture of some guy in underwear is me. JARVIS: OK, but carry it so the extreme. So what is the story? JARVIS: If he had sexually harassed someone, then maybe there’s a legitimate story. But if, at the most, he sent out a photo from his hard drive with his photo on it, what’s the big deal? What’s the news there? What’s the impact on democracy and how we live our lives? Zippo. Jarvis tried to make some sense of the MSM feeding frenzy. But there’s little sense to be found. John Ensign, whose affair is fast becoming legendary for its insanity and depravity didn’t face the feeding frenzy that this story has. Tom Coburn has been given a pass by the MSM and it appears he was deeply involved. Murray Waas did at least get a comment out of him. The media has no idea how Twitter works and what the “Follow” function does and they immediately equated it to stalking. Most people don’t know who’s following who on Twitter and how to use the many functions available to users unless they are pretty committed to it. And with so many people online and using aliases as many blog commenters do, it would have been helpful to explain how ignorant the media is about Twitter and maybe explain how it’s used. I still ask my team a lot of questions about how to use Twitter better since I’m so busy and it’s another software platform I have to learn. As Jon Stewart told CNN, how about doing some reporting since you’re a news organization . STEWART: Well I guess that’s the end of it. By the way, those liberal and conservative blogs having an all out war, they’re probably not doing anything about this story, except showing that the EXIF tags from the photo don’t match the camera Weiner normally uses, although analysis of the actual yfrog image shows no signs of manipulation although it’s very odd that the only person who image in the tweet has a history of sending harassing messages to the woman who had received the tweet and others who follow the Congressman on Twitter. Wow, those blogs, that sounds a lot like reporting. Slow down Woodward and Blogstein let the big boys at CNN handle this with their trademark “I guess we’ll never know.” To be fair, they’re not just going to let a guy come on and speculate saying Congressman Weiner might be some sort of sexual predator or pedophile, particularly if the accuser is someone who has openly and publicly sworn that his life’s mission is to destroy those people on the institutional Left.
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LIMA, Peru — A leftist former army officer with questioned human rights credentials narrowly won Peru’s presidency in a bitterly fought runoff with the daughter of disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori. Ollanta Humala, 48, won Sunday after softening his radical image and disavowing the affinity for Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez that fueled his defeat in a first run for the presidency five years earlier. He promises Peru’s poor a greater share of the Andean nation’s considerable mineral wealth and pledged in victory to honor the free market but put Peruvians first. The former army lieutenant colonel won 51.5 percent of the vote against 48.5 percent for Keiko Fujimori,…
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BALTIMORE — As the uprisings of the “Arab Spring” began to unfold, writer Matthew VanDyke was at home in Baltimore, editing a book and film about his trips across the Middle East by motorcycle. An email from a friend in Libya convinced VanDyke dispatches from that country’s war would make a perfect epilogue. Now VanDyke has been missing nearly three months. His mother, Sharon, said the 31-year-old decided he had to be there when the friend asked VanDyke to tell others of the country’s struggle if he was killed during the conflict. He’s one of 17 journalists – mostly Libyans – detained by dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s government or believed to be in custody in Libya. At least five others have been killed as rebel forces try to topple Gadhafi’s decades-old regime, said Mohamed Abdel Dayem with the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. The last time Sharon VanDyke heard her son’s voice, it was March 12 as he set off for a daytrip to Brega from Benghazi. He sent GPS coordinates the next day. His girlfriend, Lauren Fischer, 28, said she wasn’t immediately alarmed because VanDyke hadn’t sent an SOS signal as he promised he would if he met serious trouble. “I wasn’t panicked,” Fischer said. “He knows how to handle himself.” VanDyke dialed her son’s number 30 to 40 times a day for the next week, getting the same Arabic recording. Then at 4 a.m. March 22, she got a call from a man with an Arabic accent who hung up. Later that day, she got through to her son’s cell, but a stranger who answered said in English he was in Tripoli and she had the wrong number. Sharon asked for her son and his friend from Benghazi, Nouri Fonas. “He said, `I hope you find your son,’ then the line went dead,” she said. Phone companies confirmed that both calls involved her son’s cell. Fonas told her someone spotted her son in a prison in Sirte. That gave her hope, but the secondhand information gives officials little to go on. VanDyke is one of at least six Americans being held in Libya, and State Department officials are working to secure their release, said agency spokesman Mark Toner. “You know, they’ve done nothing. They should be released. And they’re simply caught up in this conflict,” he said. U.S. Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, held a news conference May 23 to call attention to VanDyke’s disappearance. Two days later , Deputy Libyan Foreign Minister Khaled Kaim said he had no information about VanDyke. Libyan officials generally have not identified Libyan journalists in custody, and have only after days or weeks identified foreigners, Dayem said. Libya’s war is just one part of what has become known as the “Arab Spring.” Longtime Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was ousted in January, and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned the next month amid a popular uprising. Uprisings also have occurred in Syria and Bahrain. VanDyke was raised in the same two-story, formstone townhouse across from a South Baltimore park that four earlier generations of his family have called home. After studying political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, he earned a master’s degree in security studies with a concentration in the Middle East in 2004 from Georgetown University in Washington. UMBC professor Thomas Schaller called VanDyke one of his smartest students and said he’s sure that, wherever VanDyke is, he’s frustrated that he’s not getting anything done. “He has thirst for life and to do things that people told him he can’t do or shouldn’t do,” Schaller said. “I just know he’s going to come out on the other end with quite a yarn.” VanDyke met Fischer in 2006 in a hostel in Spain. He was waiting for his motorcycle to arrive so he could ride across north Africa and the Middle East, but he ended up staying in Spain eight months teaching English and fixing the bike, she said. He headed to Iraq in late 2006 with another motorcycle. “He wanted to write a book and see the world he had studied about,” Fischer said. “He wanted to do something more independent.” VanDyke approached The Baltimore Examiner newspaper, which is no longer publishing, in hopes of getting credentials to be embedded with the U.S. military. Editor Frank Keegan saw an opportunity to better inform readers about an important part of the world and get stories about local soldiers overseas. The paper published two of his stories. “He’s a level-headed guy with a lot of talent,” he said. “He was not just some adventure-seeking kid who didn’t know what he was getting into.” VanDyke traveled through Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Libya with periodic visits home. He lived frugally, got sponsorship through his blog and made some money by brokering a tire sealant deal in Kurdistan, his mother said. While in Baghdad in 2009, VanDyke met photographer Daniel C. Britt, and they decided to make an East-meets-West travelogue film. Last year, they set off on a seven-month motorcycle trip through Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, chronicling the people and places they found along the way. Seeing VanDyke’s resolve while they were detained for days north of Baghdad, accused of being al-Qaida and beaten, showed Britt that he had the ability to deal with problems. “I have faith in his ability to remain calm, and that’s helping me remain positive,” Britt said. “Other than that, it’s a pretty dark scenario.” For now, Sharon VanDyke, a retired elementary school principal, keeps a bag packed in case she hears any word about her son. She is considering a trip to Libya after bringing photos of her son to the Libyan embassy in Turkey last month. Just as she gathered her son’s clips during his previous travels, she has been pulling together news stories about Libya and other materials into binders that are taking over the dining room table. “When he comes home, he’s going to read all of these while Lauren and I go on vacation,” she said. ___ Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Diaa Hadid in Tripoli, Libya, contributed to this report. ___ Online: Array
Continue reading …Malaysian politicians and feminists are furious about a new “Obedient Wives Club” that insists women must provide “prostitute-like” sex to avoid domestic violence and keep their husbands faithful, reports Reuters . The group, begun by a group of Muslim women who also support polygamy, says women must believe in God and…
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These humble-looking contraptions were revealed in a Google patent application for a “heliostat control system” that automatically adjusts solar thermal mirrors to their optimal energy-harvesting angle. A camera and computer are housed in the central tower that receives heat from the mirrors, and together they detect when a heliostat is misaligned and then correct it using actuators. Sound like a strange distraction for an Internet company? Google thinks not . It’s already invested $168 million in the world’s largest solar tower in the Mojave Desert as part of its effort to both reduce its own massive electricity bill and diversify its business. It’s also currently hiring three new technical staff to make this happen. Interested? Google’s search for future profit targets the Sun, not just the cloud originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Jun 2011 09:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Kyle Busch Brings His Face To A Fistfight The Final Lap NASCAR Recap – Brad Keselowski Wins Kansas Mike Helton on RC/KB Incident bubbarazzi says: NASCAR News: Ticker: Richard Childress ' fate in NASCAR's hands after fisticuffs with Kyle Busch – Detroit Free Press http://bit.ly/k20XsX
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